John McCain: Lap Dog Of Barack Obama, The Saudi Royals — Or Both

Senator Rand Paul, at one of his many campaign stops for his presidential run, referred to Senator John McCain as a “lap dog” to President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Many believe the proper description of Senator McCain’s relationship to Barack Obama should have been “yelping lap dog.” When Obama bows to Saudi royalty, Senator McCain is there to hold his hand.

On January 27th of this year, Senator McCain dutifully traveled with President Obama to Saudi Arabia to pay his respects to the newest Sunni despot, King Salman. McCain brought support for President Obama’s homage to the new despot in the form of two former Secretaries of State who served in Republican administrations, James A. Baker III and Condoleezza Rice.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined with Senator McCain and President Obama and other high American officials in the rather feudal ceremony of celebrating the lordship of the new King of Saudi Arabia, who apparently outranks all other world leaders. (Vice President Joe Biden showed up to slobber over the King a week later.)

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Standing by President Obama on his pilgrimage to show reverence for King Salman was not enough; the yelping lap dog keeps pressing President Obama to be even more faithful to the wishes of the Sunni King. In Iran, for example, Senator McCain wants the military strikes favored by Saudi Arabia, regardless of the cost in American lives or the resulting chaos and war in the Middle East. Iran has a population of nearly 80 million, and cannot be so easily defeated or toppled as was the government of Yemen in the “Arab Spring” at the request of King Abdullah.

McCain has also done some yelping about Syria, arguing that President Obama has not moved fast enough to follow the wishes of the Saudi royals in toppling the secular government there. McCain wanted American airstrikes in Syria, and ground forces if needed, to bring the Sunni rebels to power.

McCain went beyond backing President Obama’s efforts to overthrow secular governments in the Middle East and replace them with Sunni puppet governments favored by the Saudi royals. He actually entered Syria illegally, with the help of President Erdogan of Turkey, to foster violence and revolution. While there, he proudly posed for photos with terrorists wanted for crimes in Lebanon.

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John McCain just doesn’t get it. The United States doesn’t have the money or the military strength to actually occupy every nation in the world who has a leader who is regionally problematic. Syria was not a threat to the United States or to a single American citizen, and still isn’t. Gaddafi in Libya had become an ally of the United States; but thanks to the McCain/Obama intervention in that nation, the place is in chaos and is an exporter of terrorists who are a real threat.

The beheadings of Egyptian and Ethiopian Christians on the beaches of Libya are a direct result of the McCain/Obama Middle East policies. The Christians who lived in Libya would still be safe in their homes had it not been for Senator John McCain’s demands to murder Gaddafi and hand over control of the government to al-Qaeda linked rebels. And in Syria, tens of thousands of Christians whose families have ancestry back to the time of the Apostles of Jesus have been forced to flee their homes. Currently, mortars are being supplied to the rebels who are firing on Christian churches in Damascus, the roots of which run back to the time of the Apostle Paul.

This April, Senator John McCain announced that he will run for a sixth term in the Senate. He was first elected to the House in 1982 and then to the Senate in 1986. He was sworn in to the Senate in January 1987. As of 2015, he has been on Capitol Hill a total of thirty-two years.

During that time, McCain has been the leading hawk on Capitol Hill, voting for every military intervention anywhere, regardless of who the president was at the time. He sided with President Bill Clinton in bombing Christian Serbia back to the dark ages to protect Muslim extremists, and he endorsed President Obama’s drone campaign that has killed hundreds of innocent civilians in four different nations. He even endorsed the killing of American citizens abroad with no trial, even if they are not armed, should a president consider them a threat.

Senator McCain has on numerous occasions supported the overthrow of the governments of sovereign nations, even those with democratically elected governments. McCain traveled to Kiev in 2014 and led a rally of Ukrainian nationalists in Independence Square calling for the overthrow of the democratically elected government of that nation. With the support of Senator McCain, President Obama, and CIA funding, the democratically elected government in Ukraine did fall, causing the intervention of Russia to protect its own naval assets in the Crimea. McCain’s influence as a powerful Senator sitting in the corner of President Obama has brought Russia and the United States back into a Cold War relationship. Had he been elected, we may well have found ourselves in a hot, rather than cold, war with Russia.

Last year, I attended a GOP fundraising event near Capitol Hill that included two congressmen. The subject of Senator McCain came up, and someone present said: “We can fix the damage done by Obama; just thank God that John McCain was not elected president because we can’t fix what is left after a nuclear war.” Virtually everyone in the room said “Amen” simultaneously.

Sadly, Senator McCain does not realize how much practically everyone on Capitol Hill, except Senator Lindsey Graham, dislikes him. Because of his long captivity as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, and the torture he endured there, he is treated with respect even by those who can’t stand to be in the same room with him. McCain takes this to mean that everyone agrees with him, even with his angry rants which echo down the halls of Congress on a regular basis.

I am no psychologist, but I have a sense that the torture and isolation McCain endured while a prisoner of war in North Vietnam has much to do with his violent tendencies and eagerness to take military action just about everywhere in the world, for what he believes is even the slightest affront to our nation.

We live in a competitive capitalist world. Attempting to isolate and economically punish competitors we disagree with politically only hurts us. Dozens of American companies have been devastated financially by the “sanctions” on Russia, which only temporarily affected that nation because it is the seventh largest economy in the world. Every nation in Central and South America, as well as Africa and Asia, ignored the American and European “sanctions.” The Russian ruble took a dive last year, but has risen 35% so far this year. What exactly was gained for Americans? The CIA plan so loved by John McCain to take over Russia’s only warm water port failed, and now nuclear-equipped bombers are stationed in the Crimea instead of antiquated naval vessels. Meanwhile, the economy of the Ukraine has been destroyed.

The 1960’s are over. It was easy for the CIA to overthrow leftist governments in Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile back then; but that strategy just hasn’t worked well recently in Egypt, Yemen, Syria, or Libya. The world is more complex, and men such as McCain who can only think in terms of black and white are not an asset.

Just as the 1960’s are over, it is time for John McCain’s political career to be over. There is just no place in the Senate for a Republican, bellicose, ‘war is always the answer’, yelping lapdog for the Saudi royals and Barack Obama. John McCain needs to be sitting in front of a TV in a room with pastel walls in Arizona, not on Fox News promoting world disorder.

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website.